The Basic Essentials of Edible Wild Plants and Useful Herbs [Paperback]

Jim Meuninck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1988

Identify, collect and eat over 100 of the most nutritious plants in North America. Find 35 wild plants growing in your back yard. Discover ancient pharmaceutical uses for common herbs. An appendix catalogs and indexes many poisonous and poisonous look-a-likes. Edible Wild Plants also provides categorization by environment rather than by alphabet. Examples are rivers, lakes, ponds and swamps, woodlands, yards, and meadows, and others.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The illustrations are in black and white, they are quite legible and the volume is made to be used in conjunction with the author's 60-minute video with the same title." Outdoor Gear. -- Outdoor Gear

From the Back Cover

Whether you're out in the woods or in your backyard, this book, chock-full of drawings and information, will help you identify and collect more than 100 kinds of edible vegetation. Based on the six wild plant foraging rules-designed to protect your health and the environment-this guide will teach you not only how to find edible plants and herbs but also includes cooking tips and common pharmaceutical uses for them. Unlike traditional field guides that organize plants by season or flower color, this guide groups plants according to where you may find them-from bodies of water to yards, meadows, woodlands, mountains, plains, deserts, and coasts. With this updated guide, you'll discover how to identify and gather more than 100 of the most nutritious wild plans and useful herbs in the contiguous United States, prepare delicious recipes using your wild harvest, determine the identity of poisonous plants and poisonous look-alikes, and take charge of your personal health by making wild plants and herbs a part of your diet. (5 7/16 X 8 7/16, 72 pages, color photos, index, appendices)

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Ics Books (September 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0934802416
• ISBN-13: 978-0934802413
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,437,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Author's Unabashed Review, December 11, 1999

By 

Jim Meuninck (Edwardsburg, Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Basic Essentials Edible Wild Plants & Useful Herbs, 2nd (Basic Essentials Series) (Paperback)

This second edition has color photos. There are detailed recipes and identification tips. We cover Native American medicine, Chinese medicinal uses and modern pharmaceutical uses. The book is called the basic essentials because there are many edible wild plants out there that are not fit to eat! In this book I focused on plants worthy of your cooking efforts.

The book, unlike others, is organized by how you stumble across wild plants: geographic context. Or, more simply, they are organized in the environment that they are found. Thus, plants in wet areas are treated separately from meadow plants. And plants of the forest have their unique section separate from the seashore and mountianous plants. Yes, we have added plants from the seashore and tidal zones as well as my favorites from mountainous areas...We didn't leave the sunbirds out either. There are several desert edible included.

There is a important section on poisonous plants and poisonous look alikes.

There are more recipes, better recipes and lists of my top ten favorite wild plants and my top ten favorite edible flowers.

With color photos and attention to plants that are quality food (vitamin, mineral and phytochemical content) this new field guide is a great value for under ten dollars.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent guide of over 100 common edible plants, October 9, 2006

By 

S. Millemaci - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Basic Essentials of Edible Wild Plants and Useful Herbs (Paperback)

I've used more comprehensive guides than this, but I've never seen so much valuable information together in just 66 pages. In my own experience foraging, I've used several other much larger guides, but I had to use several sources to find all the commonly found edible plants that I've seen hiking through Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. While other guides devote most of their pages to plants rarely seen, this little book is almost completely filled with edible plants you are likely to see on a short hike. It also gives recommended uses, preparations, and warnings. There is also a small section on commonly found poisonous plants. I have not seen the accompanying video. While I'd recommend reading more verbose guides as well, I've seen no other book that gives so much valuable information in so small of a space.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Identify, collect, and eat over 100 plants in North America., June 28, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Basic Essentials of Edible Wild Plants and Useful Herbs (Paperback)

Identify, collect, and eat over 100 plants in North America. Find 35 wild plants growing in your back yard. Discover ancient pharmaceutical uses for common herbs. An appendix catalogs and indexes many poisonous and poisonous look-a-likes.